Tuesday, April 03, 2007




HOUSE OF STONE by Christina Lamb Harper Press $27.00


I reviewed House of Stone on Radio New Zealand National earlier today.
I was saddened and distressed by the story which is sub-titled The True Story of a Family Divided in War-Torn Zimbabwe.

It is the story of white farmer Nigel Hough and his children's black nanny Aquinata and how their lives were so dramatically changed by the farm invasions that began in 2000 that has since led to the ruin of the agricultural infrastructure of what was once called the breadbasket of Africa so that now most Zimbabweans live in poverty. I read a report in the New Statesman recently that said four million of them rely on food aid while many more subsist on roots and fried termites and the country’s life expectancy has dropped to the lowest in the world – just 34 for women.

And of course while the author provides a concise history of Zimbabwe and its predecessor Rhodesia what the book is really about is the disaster that is Zimbabwe under the repressive rule of Robert Mugabe who deserves no better description that that of a tyrant.

Christina Lamb is the foreign affairs correspondent for the Sunday Times and has reported on Zimbabwe since 1994 having made numerous visits to the country and in recent years these trips have been illegal and highly dangerous since Mugabe banned British journalists from entry.
She has twice been named foreign affairs journalist of the year
And she is also the author of three other books on Pakistan, Afghanistan and Africa. She has a reputation as a courageous and fair reporter so she is very well qualified indeed to write this book.

The way she does it is to follow the lives from birth to the present day of the two protagonists, the white farmer Nigel and black nanny Aquinata who were born only a few miles apart.

She did this by lengthy interviews with both of them over two years.

Their stories are told in alternating chapters with their own words italicized combined with the prose of the author. It is convincing and you have the sense that she gives them their own voices.
It is quite an achievement to describe so well the unfolding drama from both sides. It’s quite a feat of story telling but ultimately it is a distressing story because of the hopelessness of the Zimbabwean people under Mugabe who of course was the first freely elected prime minister back in 1980 and promised so much.

One of the best sections of the book for me comes at the end when she goes back to Zimbawe, illegally and under great danger, she meets up with the Houghs (who still live there even though their farm had been seized) and with Aquinata who still works for them.
She witnesses the destroyed farms and the demolished shanty settlements of the blacks where they had voted against Mugabe. This programme was called Operation Clean Up the Filth and has been widely reported in the international media.

I think the fact that in spite of everything the Houghs are still there, living in Harare and still have a great relationship with Aquinata, does suggest there might still be some hope for Zimbabwe. Once Mugabe has gone of course.


An excellent if at times a somewhat distressing read from a quite remarkable woman.
Her other titles are:
Waiting for Allah
The Africa House
The Sewing Circles of Herat

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